


Somebody to Cry With

by EmonyDeborah



Category: NCIS
Genre: F/M, Kate Lives, Kibbs, McLilah
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-28
Updated: 2017-10-14
Packaged: 2019-01-06 07:56:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12207039
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmonyDeborah/pseuds/EmonyDeborah
Summary: Special Agents Jethro Gibbs and Timothy McGee are missing somewhere in Paraguay, and their wives are only barely managing to handle it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yes I know House Divided only aired yesterday, do I look like I care?

The team thought they were handling it very well, which is exactly what Kate and Delilah wanted them to think. It had taken several hours of heated discussion with several people for Kate to even be allowed to stay at work, and therefore somewhat in the loop, and Delilah had to rely on her composure to get herself any information at all. If anyone discovered any evidence of either of them breaking down, Kate would probably be forced into taking leave, and Delilah wouldn’t hear a word about her husband until her turned up on her doorstep.

So they cried secretly, quietly, and without telling anyone. They cried together. 

There was no one else to cry with who wouldn’t tell Vance, and Kate especially needed to get it out so she could be strong for the team and for her kids. 

Their husbands were missing, and, according to the DoD, probably dead. They didn’t know what to do with themselves. They had both been expressly forbidden from using any of the considerable resources at their disposal to look for their husbands, and it was causing them no end of frustration and pain. 

They both had their jobs, and Kate had three children to care for, but somehow they found that their days were unbearably long and filled with reminders of Gibbs and McGee, and the fact that they couldn’t (officially) search for them.

Of course that hadn’t stopped them from trying, but it was hard to make any sort of progress when your clearance code suddenly didn’t work anywhere important anymore. And so, two or three times a week, when she felt herself breaking under pressure and defeat, Kate would drop her kids off at Ellie’s and drive as quickly as she could to Tim’s and Delilah’s. Delilah’s cycles of coping and cracking and breaking were remarkably aligned with Kate’s, and so whenever Kate showed up it usually took only long enough for her to close the door behind her for them both to burst into tears. Sometimes Kate made it to the couch and would curl up there, Delilah in her chair in front of her, sobbing, and grasping Kate’s hands for dear life, but normally Kate would just sink to the ground crying.

They couldn’t hold each other, the wheelchair made it kind of awkward to try, but they had a system. On non-couch days, and when Kate was in worse shape, she kneel would hug Delilah’s legs, and Delilah would stroke her hair as Kate sobbed her terror and pain into Delilah’s lap.

When Delilah needed the majority of the comforting, Kate would kneel in front of her, as straight as she could, and Delilah would lean forward and throw her arms around Kate’s neck, shaking and sniffing and coming apart at the seams.

As the weeks went on, and the two women got more comfortable breaking in front of each other, the crying sessions got shorter. Whoever was comforting whom the most, Kate was typically the first to pull herself together, and she would gently dislodge herself from Delilah’s either comforting or desperate embrace. They wiped each other’s tears, smiled private, broken smiles, and Kate left, usually after giving Delilah a quick kiss on the top of her head. They never spoke during these times, there was nothing to say. The team would try to tell them everything would work out, and the DoD would tell them that Gibbs and McGee would be home soon, Kate and Delilah didn’t need to hear it from each other.

They only needed someone to cry with.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spoilers for 15x1, and you need to have watched the episode for this to make sense.

“McGee?” Bishop asked, stunned. She looked up at the people around her for confirmation of what she was she was hearing. She hadn’t known what to expect when she had called the number on the dead man’s phone, but the voice of her missing coworker had not been on her list of possibilities. Nick and Clayton were staring at her, eyes round and wide, and Kate was hunched over her desk, her muscles tensed. The older woman was staring at the phone on the desk, and if it was possible, Ellie was sure that her gaze would bore a hole straight through the flimsy piece of technology.

“Yeah, it’s me, it’s Tim, how did you get this number?” Ellie’s eyes snapped back to the phone, and her answer was a jumble of questions and words and strange noises she didn’t know she could make.

“Never mind, are you-how-what’s going-?” Kate looked up at her, panic growing in her eyes.

“Is Jethro with you?” Kate finally asked when Ellie failed to pull herself together in an acceptable amount of time.

“I’m here, Kate.” Gibbs’ voice crackled through the speaker, and for a second, Ellie was sure that Kate was going to collapse. 

“Are you guys okay?” Kate asked in a shaky voice. “Where are you?”

 

The next fifteen minutes passed in a frenzy of activity. Kate mainly paced back and forth across MTAC, listening intently to Ellie’s tech-centered conversation with McGee and furious typing, but terrified to say anything and interrupt. She desperately wanted to talk to her husband, to hear his voice telling her again and again that he was alive and he was coming home. But his return was not at all guaranteed, so Kate kept her mouth shut while Ellie tried to work out where Gibbs and McGee were.

Once Ellie had the Paraguayan helicopters pointed in the right direction, Gibbs and McGee had to hang up, and the next twenty minutes were the longest of Kate’s life. She stood in the middle of MTAC hugging herself and staring at the center screen. Ellie, Nick, Clayton, and the Director formed ranks around her, trying to be supportive while hiding their own desperation. If Kate had been paying attention to them at all, she would have seen right through each of their acts. Clayton was biting his lip, Ellie was chewing her nails, both their signature signs of extreme anxiety. Nick and the Director were absolutely still, and also staring at the center screen, their shoulders tense.

Ellie had patched MTAC through to the helicopter pilots, and they were updating them regularly.

“We have eyes on the target,” one of the helicopter pilots said. Kate closed her eyes. She felt Ellie gently touch her arm, and she put her hand over Ellie’s and squeezed with all of her might. To her credit, the young woman didn’t pull away, even though she did let a small gasp escape her lungs.

Two minutes later, they received another update. “The Americans are on board.” The entire room collectively let out a shaky breath. Kate let go of Ellie’s hand and stumbled back to a chair before collapsing into it, her hands over her face. Ellie tackled Nick and pulled him into a hug, knocking the wind of him, before moving on to Clayton and then the Director. Then she ran out of MTAC, presumably to tell Abby everything that had happened.

Once Ellie was gone, Nick, Clayton, and the Director were left with a shuddering Kate. Nick and Clayton glanced at each other, both of them silently urging the other one to say something. Finally, the Director brushed between them and stood in front of Kate. He briefly squeezed her shoulder, then swept away, with a withering glance at Nick and Clayton, to make some calls. Both men swallowed nervously, but Kate chose that moment to stand up and run out of the room, and thus saved Nick and Clayton from having to do anything remotely comforting. Kate bolted to her desk, grabbed her purse, and ran to the elevator.

 

Delilah’s day had been relatively uneventful. She had thrown up a few times, but that was normal. Kate had been over the night before and she wasn’t expecting anyone else, so she was surprised when there was a knock on the door. She wheeled herself to the door and opened it. Her heart clenched and filled with dread when she saw Kate on the threshold with tear tracks on her face.

“Kate? What-?” Her voice broke, and she took a deep breath, preparing for the worst.

“We found them,” Kate said quickly. “They’re coming home.” Delilah’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open before she closed it and swallowed.

“They are?” she whispered. Kate nodded as she knelt in front of her.

“They’re coming home,” she said again, this time with a watery smile. Delilah reached forward, pulled Kate into a hug, and completely broke down, not caring about their awkward position or that the front door was still open. Kate hugged her back as well as she could, and allowed a few more tears to leak out of the corners of her eyes, but only a few. She didn’t want to cry anymore, not now that Jethro was coming home and their family was finally going to be whole again. She gently pulled herself from Delilah’s grasp and stood up.

“I should get back to headquarters. I’ll send Abby over and keep you updated, okay?” Delilah nodded, wiping her eyes. “Okay,” Kate said, and turned to leave. But she hesitated, before turning back and dropping a kiss into Delilah’s hair. Then she swept out, closing the door behind her, and Delilah was left alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please leave a comment! I didn’t intend on making this longer, but a few people seemed to want more, so here it is. Thanks for reading!


	3. Chapter 3

Leroy Jethro Gibbs was tired, hungry, and he was sure he didn’t smell too good, as he hadn’t bathed in two months. He hadn’t spoken since his request for an immediate release had been denied, and Tim was getting nervous that he was nearing the breaking point between glaring murderously and actually murdering someone.

“I know we have to be debriefed, but this isn’t exactly an urgent matter of national security, is it? I mean, the leader and the scientific mastermind of the organization are both dead, their men have disbanded, and Paraguayan authorities are surely taking steps to retrieve the uranium,” he reasoned with the DoD official who had been assigned to babysit them until they both agreed to several debriefings, over what would probably be at least two weeks. He glanced at Gibbs pleadingly. His boss glared at him coldly, then deliberately scratched his beard and brushed some imaginary dust off of his filthy coat. And just like that, Tim understood the plan and his part in it. If he hadn’t been so desperate to get home, it would have struck him that he and Gibbs could now communicate so effectively without words, but as it was, he didn’t have the time or the patience to ponder it. “Look,” he said, rubbing his eyes as if defeated, “We’ll talk to you, okay? But can we at least get showers and a change of clothes?” 

The DoD official, a no-nonsense looking woman in a pantsuit, glanced over them, her eyebrows raised, and pursed her lips. She sent a quick text to someone and didn’t speak until she got a reply.

“All right,” she said finally. She stood up and opened the door. Outside was one of the largest men either Gibbs or McGee had ever seen, and Gibbs was begrudgingly grateful that Tim had convinced him to not just try and run away. 

“Take them to the showers on the second floor, and get them some jumpsuits,” the woman ordered the big man, who nodded and stood aside. The woman gestured that Gibbs and McGee were free to go, and they brushed by her and out the door without another word. 

The big man didn’t introduce himself, he just led them to an elevator and followed them into it. They rode in silence down to the second floor, and from there the man led them to a large bathroom with four shower stalls. 

“Hey Boss, remind you of anything?” Tim asked, grinning for the first time in what felt like years.

“Nothing I want to remember, McGee,” Gibbs said gruffly, but Tim just chuckled to himself and grabbed some soap.

“It was simpler back then, wasn’t it Boss?” Tim yelled over the wall of his shower stall as he washed his hair. “When our biggest problems were a terrorist and the plague?” Gibbs didn’t answer, but Tim felt something hit him on the head and fall to the floor. He looked down and laughed when he saw Gibbs’ bottle of shampoo.

After their showers, Gibbs and McGee accepted blue jumpsuits and white sneakers from the big man, who had been waiting outside the whole time as they showered. He opened the door for them and gestured for them to walk out, but Gibbs waved him off.

“Hold your horses, give us a minute.” Gibbs held up the razor from his bag that had held his soap, and the big man narrowed his eyes. Gibbs leaned forward conspiratorially. “My wife hates when I grow a beard,” he said in a low voice, as if he were spilling a huge secret.

“Really, Boss?” McGee asked, already lathering up his face for his own shave. Gibbs raised his eyebrows at the big man, who rolled his eyes and left to wait outside. Gibbs smirked and started on his own shave.

“Yeah, McGee. If I don’t shave twice a day Kate won’t come near me,” Gibbs eventually answered.

“Twice a day? Isn’t that a bit extreme?” Gibbs sighed.

“She says it scratches her face.”

“So she makes you shave morning and night so it won’t scratch when you-”

“We’re done talking about this,” Gibbs interrupted roughly.

“Yep,” McGee responded, aware that he had crossed some sort of line. “So, how are we gonna get rid of the Hulk out there?”

“All in good time, McGee,” Gibbs answered, and they finished their shaves without another word.

Twenty minutes later, a DoD agent was found tied up in shower curtains, the two NCIS agents were long gone, and Ellie Bishop answered a call from an unknown number.

“Hey Bishop! Could we get a ride?”

Kate Gibbs was sitting at her couch, her three year old son asleep on her lap, watching her daughters color in the sketchbooks she had given them. Maura and Eloise had begged her to draw with them, but she had gently refused and pulled Leo onto her lap to give herself an excuse. She hadn’t drawn anything in two months, she had been too tired and stressed. Maura and Eloise, Kate and Gibbs’ nine year old twin daughters, understood that their daddy had gone away somewhere, but they didn’t know when he would be back. Kate had made a point of telling them everyday that Daddy would come home soon and that he loved them wherever he was, but they had perceived that their mother was sad all the time, and it worried them and gave them nightmares. 

It killed Kate that she couldn’t help them, but she didn’t want to tell them that she had found Gibbs until she knew when he was coming home. She knew about the long repatriation process he would probably be forced to go through, and she wasn’t looking forward to the supervised meetings she would have to endure before her husband could come home.

A knock on the door, which she know locked every night, interrupted the somber quiet.

“Eloise, could you go and see who it is, I don’t want to wake Leo.” Eloise nodded and bounced to the front door. Kate heard her daughter squeal in delight and open the door, and she figured it was one of the team. “Who is it sweetheart?” she called over her shoulder. She heard steps heavier than her daughter’s walk into the living room, and Maura looked up from her sketchbook. Her nine year old face split into a gigantic smile, and she launched herself over the coffee table where she and her sister had been drawing and ran around the couch. Kate twisted in her seat in time to see her husband sweep up their daughter and cover her face with kisses. He was already holding Eloise in his other arm, and Maura wasted no time in latching herself onto his other side.

Kate stared at Gibbs, her mouth hanging open, trying to convince herself that what she was seeing was real, while being almost sure that it wasn’t. She gently lifted Leo off of her lap and rested him on the couch before standing and watching Gibbs walk around the couch to her. He stood in front of her and his eyes stared into hers, and they were his eyes, the eyes that Kate remembered. 

Gibbs stared at his wife, drinking in every detail of her. Her face was thinner then it had been, and Gibbs could tell from the way her clothes were hanging on her that she had lost weight. Her brown eyes seemed huge as she gazed up at him and there were purple circles under them. She was unhealthily pale, and her hair had become dull and frizzy. And to Gibbs, she had never seemed more beautiful.

She reached out and tentatively touched his face. Maura looked between them curiously.

“It’s Daddy, Mommy,” she said, as if Kate had somehow missed that. Gibbs smiled and kissed Maura and Eloise one more time on their foreheads, and gently put them down. Eloise was reluctant to let go, but Gibbs managed to dislodge her long enough to pull Kate into his arms. For a moment, Kate was unresponsive and just stared up at him, but then she seemed to suddenly come to herself, and she wrapped her arms around Gibbs’ neck and kissed him with a ferocity that surprised both of them, and made Maura and Eloise scrunch their noses identically. They wiggled in between their parents and both wrapped their arms around Gibbs and nuzzled into his stomach. Gibbs and Kate smiled into their kiss and broke apart when the squirming children between them started to become inconvenient for kissing fervently.

Gibbs knelt down and gathered Maura and Eloise in his arms, then he carried them to the couch and sat down with one on either side. Kate scooped Leo up, and Gibbs gently took him from her arms, careful not to jostle him awake. As Kate sat down next to Maura, Gibbs softly stroked his son’s hair and kissed the top of his head. Kate reached behind Maura, who wrapped her arms around her mother and leaned on her contentedly, and ran her fingers through Gibbs’ hair. She lightly ran her fingers over the bruise on his face and then resumed playing with his hair. Gibbs grinned and leaned over Maura, dragging a clinging Eloise along with him, and Kate pressed her forehead to his, trying to soak in every bit of the moment.

Tomorrow, she would go and see Delilah, and they would cry together, but this time Gibbs would go with her, and Tim would be there, and the tears would be happy.

Tim McGee stood at the door of his apartment, his fist raised. He could hear footsteps on the other side, which meant that his wife was not alone. Just inside was his wife, his beautiful Delilah, who was pregnant with his baby. He had missed two whole months of her life, of their life together, two months that he would never get back. He had hesitated when they had gotten to his apartment building, unsure of himself, unsure if he could handle just starting again, like he had never left. Gibbs had gotten out of the car and stood silently next to him as Tim struggled with himself.

“Boss-” he had started to say, but Gibbs had cut him off by pulling him into a hug. After a moment he stepped back and looked into Tim’s troubled eyes.

 

“Go, Tim.” As Tim stood in front of his door, he remembered the reassuring encouragement that had been in Gibbs’ eyes, and the gentle squeeze Gibbs had given his shoulder before pushing him towards the building.

He knocked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please comment! What did you think? Is this a satisfactory ending? Honestly, this story was supposed to just have one chapter, but I’m glad I continued it. Thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> Please review! This was harder to write than I thought it would be, I'm not very good at writing emotion without much plot. I am proud of it, though. Thanks for reading!


End file.
